Primeval, Series 2, Episode 1

At the end of series one Cutter came back from a trip into an anomaly and things had changed: Claudia Brown, who he'd worked with at The Home Office, didn't even exist for a start, and then the Home Office building was no longer their base, instead they have the groovy new Anomaly Research Centre, aka ARC.

The involvement of a large team, in a large building, with a government member on hand makes the top secret team far more believable than say, Torchwood, with their underground base and apparent isolation.

This episode gets straight into what Primeval did well last series, some good old fashioned monster hunting. A raptor has come through an anomaly in a shopping mall, and so the team go in at night and hunt it in an empty mall. It's not original but it's well executed, the dinosaurs look good, Connor's dialogue is witty (particularly involving Abby), Cutter is wrestling with having changed the world (literally) and there's lots of action. Getting a raptor to chase you whilst on a motorbike is a bit silly, but I can let it go.

And that about sums up Primeval, it's such good fun that I can tolerate anything slightly silly. It doesn't take itself too seriously, and yet adds enough plot intrigue to pull me through to the next episode.

The big discovery breakthrough this episode was that the anomaly causes distortion on the FM band, over Radio 2. Cue the building of an anomaly detector next episode and lots of racing to find it before some Giant Worms get through. Of course!

The ITV site for this episode is here, including screen shots, forums, and watch the episode online.